L'AQUILA :G8 leaders meeting in this Italian town will strongly condemn North Korea's missile tests, though they will likely not agree a tougher stance on Iran, senior officials said on Wednesday.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, speaking on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, said there was no consensus on an accord on condemning Tehran's crackdown on post-election protests.
He indicated it would almost certainly not back US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call for stronger sanctions against the Islamic republic.
"On Iran, we will find the right wording," said by Frattini, indicating differences between the leaders after they met for a working lunch.
"The important thing is that the international community does not tolerate violence and the violation of human rights," he said.
But pressed by reporters who asked if the G8 would go further than condemning Iran's crackdown, he said: "For the moment, the conditions aren't there."
Signs of division over Iran were evident at last month's preparatory foreign ministers meeting in Trieste, north-eastern Italy, when "they eventually agreed to deplore but not to condemn the bloody crackdown, amid opposition from Russia."
They called on Iran to resolve its political crisis quickly with "democratic dialogue and peaceful means."
A spokesman for Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso said that the G8 leader's final declaration would closely follow the wording agreed in Trieste, although it might be updated to take into account more recent events.
Kazuo Kodama said Iran would be warned that "time is not unlimited" for it to respond to criticism of its nuclear programme.
Divergences appeared in Trieste when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that isolating Iran was the "wrong approach" and could derail efforts to win cooperation from Tehran on its nuclear programme.
Again at the L'Aquila summit, a threat of sanctions against Tehran appears unlikely because of Moscow's objections, according to a senior European diplomat.
"We won't go further in L'Aquila because Russia opposes interference in countries internal affairs," he said on condition of anonymity.
Relations between Iran and the West, already strained over the nuclear issue, have been further damaged by Tehran's arrest of a French citizen and several Iranian employees of the British embassy.
London and Paris have both furiously insisted that the detainees are innocent, and fellow European Union member governments have also made diplomatic protests over the incident.
Tehran has remained defiant, however, and supreme leader Ali Khamenei declared: "The Iranian nation warns the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation, beware! The Iranian nation will react."
"We would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast in Venezuela.
"President Obama is trying to create a normal relationship with Iran and we are waiting for a response from the Iranians," on his proposal for dialogue, said by US National Security Advisor James Jones.
The Frenchwoman, a university researcher, was picked up earlier this month as she was preparing to leave the country, and has been accused of spying. One of the embassy employees is also still in custody and facing trial.
According to European diplomats, leaders are considering protesting by temporarily recalling their ambassadors from Tehran and reducing the number of visas they issue to Iranian travellers.
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